The day after returning from Utah, Sue and I were walking outside in Saddle Rock when a swallowtail butterfly landed in a corkscrew willow not 5 feet from me. Luckily, I had a camera with me, since this was a butterfly with a difference: he posed, first with his wings open and then with his wings closed. For the most part, I'm accustomed to jogging after a butterfly in the hope that it would stay still long enough for a photograph. Having a cooperative butterfly was rather shocking.

Thus while I'm still sorting out the 1800 photos from the past trip, I thought I'd relax and put up two photos of the very beautiful eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus):

As one might expect, there is also a western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus), which looks identical to its eastern relative. Perhaps it is time to put regional feuds aside and unify east and west into one happy tiger swallowtail family?